I really need help as soon as possible with RAW files

dr1ftphotography · Jun 15, 2015

I am doing a photo shoot and need to shoot in raw otherwise i will get fired. The shoot is in 2 days. Yesterday I went to a car show and tried to shoot in the raw format, I came home and uploaded the pictures i took in raw onto IPhoto. When I uploaded them I put the raw picture files onto my desktop of the computer and the file name was a jpeg. So my raw file turned into a jpeg file. Why? I dont know if its a problem with my t5i or the computer. Please answer!

goodguy · Jun 15, 2015

That never happened to me.....weird!

One option is that you are maybe shooting at RAW+JPEG and you moved only the JPEG to the desktop.
Second is that you missed something with your settings, I dont think a computer just process RAW into JPEG on its own, mine doesn't do it anyways.

Ysarex · Jun 15, 2015

The raw files saved by your camera have the file extension .CR2. Take the SD card from the camera and put it in the computer. Open the SD card for viewing and confirm that .CR2 files are present.

If they are not on the card then the camera isn't saving them. That's possible. If you put the camera into full auto mode it will override your menu settings and only save JPEGs.

Hopefully you have something better than iPhoto to manage and process the photos.

Joe

astroNikon · Jun 15, 2015

^^ check the SD card directly as above.
I haven't used iPhoto in awhile but I think when you import RAW files iPhoto only shows the embedded JPEG (or creates a JPEG for viewing) OR if you had both it stacks them and you have to select the correct one in iPhoto.

The file is in the directory structure somewhere. Search online of how to copy iPhoto files in the directory structure. If you imported raw, then they are there deep in the file directories.

I haven't used it in a long time though, so check the help.

Just keep testing how to use RAW, etc at home .. you don't have to go somewhere to test how to use it. Take some shots, check the SD card contents, then import and see the results.

TCampbell · Jun 18, 2015

iPhoto is a JPEG processing application. It can import RAW, but it will immediately create a JPEG version of the image and THAT is the version of the image that will be adjusted. If you shoot RAW, you don't want to use iPhoto.

The most popular application for RAW workflow is Adobe Lightroom. In theory you can still "buy" Lightroom but I've noticed they really hide this ... Adobe wants you to "rent" Lightroom. They have a photography package that includes unlimited use of Lightroom and Photoshop for $10/month but they require a minimum 1 year subscription (they'll let you pay all $120 up front... but you can also just pay $10 per month each month, you don't have to pay up-front.)

The free option is to use Canon's Digital Photo Professional (DPP) which also knows how to deal with Canon RAW files. While DPP does a good job, the nice thing about Lightroom is that you do a full import to your photo library and you can easily move from image to image (rather than DPP where you have to open and process each image one-at-a-time and save each image one-at-a-time.) Lightroom is handling management of your photo libraries in addition to being the image adjustment application.

I've only recently converted to Lightroom. I previously used Apple Aperture, but Apple has announced that they will not be continuing development on Aperture, so I don't recommend you use that.

Ysarex · Jun 18, 2015

Just as a heads up concerning LR. A change of consequence occurred this week with the release of LR 6.1. LRCC (subscription) has now split off from LR 6 (no subscription). In this most recent update features were added to the subscription version that the non-subscription upgrade did not include. This would suggest the imminent demise of the non-subscription version of LR.

Joe